So I always figured that pumpkin cheesecake was pretty modern, like
Cheesecake Factory modern, but it turns out
that in 1570 Bartolomeo Scappi wrote a recipe that is basically pumpkin cheesecake.
So thank you to Babbel for sponsoring this video as we resurrect Renaissance Italy's version
of pumpkin cheesecake and explore how its main ingredient became a carved symbol for Halloween,
this time on Tasting History.
So this recipe comes from one of my favorite cookbooks the 'Opera di Bartolomeo Scappi'
whose recipes were meant to feed the popes of Renaissance Italy,
but today it will feed the Max of modern day Burbank.
"To prepare a pumpkin tort without a shell.
When the pumpkin is scraped, cook it in a good meat broth or else in salted water and butter.
Then put it into a strainer and squeeze the broth out of it.
Grind it in a mortar along with, for every two pounds of it,
a pound of fresh ricotta and a pound of a creamy cheese that is not too salted.
When everything is ground up put it through a colander, adding in 10 well-beaten eggs, a pound of ground sugar,
an ounce of ground cinnamon, a pound of milk, four ounces of fresh butter,
and half an ounce of ginger.
Have a tort pan ready with six ounces of very hot butter in it,
and put the filling into it. Bake it in an oven or braise it giving it a glazing with sugar and cinnamon.
Serve it hot."
So first I love this recipe because you don't have to make a crust.
It's basically just the filling which in my opinion is the best part.
Also like with all of Scappi's recipes
it's HUGE.
So I'm going to be cutting it way down, and it's still going to be pretty darn big.
So for this recipe what you'll need is one medium pumpkin.
Now I'm using a sugar pumpkin but the word that's actually in the original recipe could refer to
any assortment of gourds or squashes that had come over from the New World.
So you can use pretty much anything that you want but we're going to be using it to make two cups or 450 grams of pumpkin puree.
So if you'd rather just use canned pumpkin which is usually made of Dickinson pumpkin, that works too,
but if you are using a whole pumpkin then you'll also need a large pot of water,
a tablespoon of salt, and 2 tablespoons or 30 grams of salted butter.
Then 1 cup or 240 grams of ricotta cheese, 1 cup or 225 grams of mascarpone or cream cheese, you'll never know the difference.
7 medium eggs, 1 and a quarter cup or 250 grams light brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of cinnamon.
Now that is a lot of cinnamon and actually he calls for quite a bit more.
Now Scappi was known for having heavily spiced foods partly as a way to show off the papal coffers
but also because due to how they were shipped and how they were kept, spices were probably a little bit less potent so
that's one reason why I'm cutting down the amount.
The same goes for four teaspoons of ginger,
one cup or 240 milliliters of cream, a high fat milk will work as well.
5 tablespoons or 70 grams of unsalted butter, a quarter cup or 60 milliliters of melted butter,
and a bit of a cinnamon and sugar mixture.
Now translating these older recipes can be a bit tricky due to the old nature of the language
but Taryn Scully's translation is really quite good.
When it comes to more modern translations I'm able to do a lot of it myself
with a little bit of help from today's sponsor Babel. So I've been using Babel for quite a while now. I've mentioned
it a few times here on the show and it's fantastic because it allows you to learn a new language.
And there are podcasts and games to keep things interesting.
But what I didn't expect to get from a language app is a little bit of the satisfaction that I get from international travel.
I love international travel, it's one of my favorite things to do and I haven't been able to do it for quite some time
but every day even if it's just for 10 minutes during those language lessons
I get like a little travel appetizer. It immerses you in the culture via the language
and hopefully when I am ready to travel again the language lessons will have paid off,
and I'll be able to be more immersed in the culture when I actually get to the country.
So if you want to learn a new language or if you're just missing travel like I am you can get 65% off Babbel.
That's less than five dollars a month to learn a new language by clicking the link in the description
and until then you can transport yourself through time and space
by making a cheesecake from Renaissance Italy.
So first let's make our pumpkin puree.
So cut your pumpkin in two and then peel it
and remove the seeds and other guts.
Then cut it up into small pieces about an inch to an inch and a half wide.
Then heat your pot of water to boiling, stir in the salt and the butter
and once the butter is melted add in the pumpkin and boil for about 20 minutes or until it's quite soft that you
could stab it with a knife or a fork very easily.
Then take the pot off the heat and put the pumpkin into a food processor. Then puree.
Once it's nice and smooth. Set the puree in a sieve over a pot
and let the liquid drain, but don't push the puree through the sieve.
Then put the pumpkin into a large bowl and add in the ricotta and the mascarpone, then mix until smooth.
Then whisk the eggs and add them to the bowl and mix.
Now this is the last time that your mixture is going to be
orange or yellowish like a pumpkin because then you're going to mix in the brown sugar.
And you can use white sugar, it won't be as complex a flavor but it will keep it lighter but
then you're going to add in a ton of cinnamon and ginger and that's going to make it dark no matter what you do,
so just make peace with it.
Then pour in your creamer milk and the butter and mix until smooth.
Then add a bit of the melted butter to a cake or pie pan.
Now the amount of butter that Scappi calls for this is insane
and it's hard to tell exactly what he wants because
of the size of his tort pan may be very very different. It might be more shallow and wide
but essentially you want to kind of cover the bottom of the pan. If you use too much like I ended up doing
then it ends up actually kind of on the top of the cake when you pour in your batter.
It's not a bad thing, it's not going to hurt the cake but I kind of feel like it's not supposed to be that way,
but it's butter so you're not gonna regret it.
Then carefully slide the cheesecake into an oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 175 Celsius for an hour and 15 minutes,
and while you do let us contemplate the main ingredient of our dish
in its most quite literally flamboyant form the jack-o-lantern.
Today jack-o-lanterns can be spooky or goofy or pretty much whatever you want them to be.
They often sit on porches or windowsills to usher in the Halloween season all in good fun
but their origins might be a bit more sinister.
The custom of carving faces into produce may have evolved
from the practice of taking the heads of one's enemies as war trophies
and displaying them as a warning to others who might be tempted to cross you.
A little extreme but no doubt effective.
Now if that was the case then at some point people migrated from using actual human heads, very very messy,
to using human head shaped produce, but not originally pumpkins.
Now the first jack-o-lanterns are hard to pin down but they were probably carved somewhere in the British Isles
most likely in Ireland where they celebrated Samhain,
a Celtic festival held each year at the end of October.
It was the night of the year when the veil between our world and the supernatural was at its thinnest
and the world seemed to fill up with mischievous fairies and ghoulies and the spirits of the dead.
Now many of the customs associated with the holiday ended up being transplanted
onto the Christian holiday of All Hallows' Eve or Halloween
and I talk about some of those in the episode on Soul Cakes and the history of trick-or-treating
which I'll put in a link right here and down in the description.
Now some of the oldest Irish stories tell of people blacking out their faces
and wearing veils to hide their identity from the dead which makes me wonder
what did you do to them when they were alive that makes you think they're coming after you now that they're dead.
Hm? o_0?
So if your face was obscured you could carve an alternate face into a vegetable
to throw off the spirits that are hunting you down,
and for that beets and turnips did the job and since its job was to be creepy
this freaky thing deserves a raise.
Another thing used to scare off the baddies were bonfires so it makes sense
to have a tiny bonfire or like a little candle inside of your carved turnip to to scare them away.
It also acted then as a lantern,
and when it comes to the name jack-o'-lantern it is another Irish folk tale that we have to look to.
So the peat bogs of Ireland are a dangerous place at the best of times
but in the evenings and night they can become downright deadly
due to what a 16th century writer called "Ignus fatuus or foolish fire known locally as will-o'-the-wisp."
They're flickering lights out over the bog that people would follow believing them to be lights
given off by people or a town off in the distance.
In reality they're the gases of decaying plant matter that go up and then ignite in the air making little sparks
and people would follow them and instead go into the bog and they would die.
But before the true nature of this phenomena was discovered many people thought that it might be jack-o'-lantern playing a trick.
In life the man was known as Stingy Jack, a drinker, a gambler, a degenerate
and somebody I'd think I'd like to hang out with for a night except that he was Stingy Jack so
I'd be buying all of the drinks.
Anyway one version of the story, and there are many, but in one version of the story
the Devil decides it is Jack's turn to give up the ghost and
goes to Jack and says okay time to die and come with me, and Jack says okay
but can I have one last drink,
drink and the Devil is never one to turn down a cocktail so he says okay. So they go to a tavern.
Well, one drink turns into a lot of drinks and at the end of the night comes to pay the tab and
Stingy Jack says uh by the way I have no money and the Devil should have kind of figured that out, his name was Stingy Jack,
but Jack says hey I have an idea. You could just turn yourself into a coin
and we could give it to the barman and then you can change back into the Devil, so why don't we do that.
And the Devil says okay!
So he turns into a coin and then Jack double crosses him,
takes the coin and puts it into his pocket where being an Irish Catholic
he also has a crucifix making it so the Devil can't turn back into the Devil.
And he's like let me out of here and Jack says okay but only if you promise to never take me to hell.
Well the Devil agrees because he wants to turn back into the Devil
so he takes him out turns back in the Devil and goes off on his wicked little way.
So flash forward a few years and Stingy Jack dies and knowing that he's not going to hell
he scoots on up to heaven and is like hey let me in but St. Peter is like
It's definitely a no from me dawg.
Okay I didn't see that one coming.
So he goes down to hell and knocks on the door and is like
Hello, Satan!
Can I- can I come in because the Netherworld is really dark and cold and I can't go up there. So
i'll be- i'll be fine here, but the Devil says
how about no, but I'll tell you what I am going to do.
I'm going to give you one red-hot glowing ember because we got plenty
and that will be your only heat and light for the rest of eternity.
So Stingy Jack takes the ember and goes and finds a turnip,
carves it out, puts the ember inside to make himself a little lamp and that's what he became known for.
He was Jack of the lantern, or in Ireland Jack-o'-lantern.
Though the name gets a few changes. In parts of England in the 18th century they were known as Hobarty's lantern
and in an article from the 'Limerick Chronicle' in 1837 the winner of a gourd carving contest
receives "the best crown of Jack Mclantern which I kind of love Jack McLantern."
Which I kinda love, Jack McLantern.
I think we might want to go back to that but here in the US it was Jack-o'-lantern that stuck.
Now one might think that the first mention of Jack-o-lanterns would be from Washington Irving's
'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' from 1820. The Headless Horseman is often portrayed carrying a flaming jack-o-lantern
like in the Disney version, or in the Wishbone version.
Remember Wishbone? Gosh I love that show.
Remember?
But there's no actual mention of a jack-o-lantern in the story
though along with some hoof prints a shattered pumpkin was found beside the hat of poor unfortunate Ichabod crane.
And speaking of Ichabods the actual first mention of jack-o'-lanterns in the US comes from a story
with one of my favorite non-Dickensian character names ever, master Ichabod Pigsnort.
It's from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1835 story about a giant gem known as 'The Great Carbuncle'
and the gem was so brilliant that if you put it under a cloak
"...it will gleam through the holes, and make thee look like a jack-o'-lantern!"
And by this time it's almost certain that turnips had been abandoned, at least here in the US,
and that it was pumpkins being used to make jack-o'-lanterns
because in 1850 in a poem called 'The Pumpkin' it says
"Oh! Fruit loved of boyhood! The old days recalling
When wood grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
glaring out through the dark with a candle within!"
Though it was associated with autumnal gatherings in general. In fact it was a must-have at every Thanksgiving.
In fact the first known image of an American jack-o'-lantern was put out the week of Thanksgiving 1867.
It was called a pumpkin effigy and was shown in Harper's Weekly.
For jack-o'-lanterns definite link to Halloween
we must look to our neighbors to the north in a Canadian newspaper from Kingston Ontario in 1866.
It outlines what children were doing then and now to celebrate the holiday and the
jack-o'-lantern figures prominently.
"The old time custom of keeping up Halloween was not forgotten last night by the youngsters of the city.
They had their maskings and their merry makings,
and perambulated the streets after dark in a way which was no doubt amusing to themselves.
There was a great sacrifice of pumpkins from which to make transparent heads and faces,
lighted up by the unfailing two inches of tallow candle.
So whether you prefer to think of your jack-o'-lantern as the severed head of one of your enemies,
the lamp belonging to a soul rejected from heaven or hell,
or just a lovely fall tradition
make sure to keep the scraps of your carvings so you can make Scappi's pumpkin cheesecake
from Renaissance Italy.
So you'll know your cheesecake is ready when it's puffed up a bit, and just a little wobbly in the center.
Then bedight the top by sprinkling a bit of the cinnamon and sugar mixture over it,
and then turn off the oven and close the oven door letting it slowly cool down for about 45 minutes.
Then remove the cake from the oven
and let it cool a bit more. It is supposed to be served warm,
but if it's too hot then it's basically liquid.
And here we are Scappi's pumpkin torte or cheesecake from 1570.
So it is firm-ish. I mean enough that it can hold its shape but it's also very soft.
It's almost like a pudding.
Let's give it a shot. Like I said he uses so much cream
or milk.
I would probably use like a bit less maybe it'll be a bit more firm but let's give it a taste.
Hm! *_*
That is good.
So the syllabub was one of my favorites.
The semlor episode was definitely one of my favorite desserts.
I love the parmesan ice cream actually too, but
I think this might be it.
I think this might be the best thing I've ever made on this show.
It's so- the texture is- it's not smooth like a New York style cheesecake
but it's- but it's pretty smooth.
It's very, very soft but I mean it holds.
But the flavor, a lot of pumpkin and a lot of cinnamon
and ginger, a lot of cinnamon. There's a ton of cinnamon in it but not like
it's not like this is cinnamon pie.
It's oh- it's really, really good.
I'm going to- i'm going to remake this for Thanksgiving this year.
I'm going to probably cut the the cream in half just so it's a little bit more firm, though this isn't bad,
But yeah I'm making this one again. Also I love that there's no crust. It's so easy.
So make surethat you're subscribed to Tasting History and hit that notification bell so you never miss an episode,
and I would love it if you could share this episode with your friends and family or anyone who loves pumpkin because
I hope that this ends up on Thanksgiving tables this year.
It's really, really worth it
and if you want 65% off Babbel make sure to hit the link in the description
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
I'm going to eat all this. It's- it's so good.